Professional Resources File

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Books For The Teacher
  • Tsujimoto, Joseph." Lightning Fires: How Passionate Teachers Engage With Adolescent Writers". Heineman (2001)
    • Gives ideas of how to help students find and appreciate their inner writer. It also focuses on strategies to get all students to the point they need to be at in their writing skills.
  • Winner, Ellen. "The Point of Words". Harvard University Press (1997).
    • This interesting book consists of ways that an adolescent and child use and develop vocabulary. It focuses a lot on metaphors and their importance in the development of these children's edcuation and literacy.
  • Harvey, Stephanie. "Strategies That Work: Teaching Comprehension for Understanding"
    • This is a simple "manual" of ways to get your students to understand what and how to learn to the best of their individual ability.
Games/Activities/Projects
  • "The Brown Bag Project" (introduced by Lisa Hazlett)
    • During this project the students must come up with eight things that represent the novel that they are reading and place them in a brown bag. Then the students will tell why they chose these things, describe the significance, and come up with questions for the object
  • The Potato Project
    • Students will take a potato and make it into anything they want and bring it to class. Then over a span of a few class periods the students will write a narrative, descriptive, and argumentative essay about their "potato creation"
  • Picture Narrative
    • Students will use a picture given in class and write a narrative about what is, has, or is going to happen in the picture.


Posters/Pictures

Thematic Units
  • Eras (1930's, 80's etc)
    • This unit can be used in almost any type of book that is read. For instance, books dealing with certain time frames that need more detailed explanation (1984, Of Mice and Men, To Kill A Mockingbird)
  • Inspiration
    • This unit would go better in the middle school area. In this unit one could introduce such literary works as lyrics, poetry, and short personal narratives
  • Authors
    • It would be fun to explore the different ways that one author has wrote over his or her lifetime, and compare those styles

DVD/Videos

Websites

Professional Journals
  • ERIC
  • Instructor Magazine
  • Scholastic

Community Involvement
  • Guest speakers such as administration and other respected adults in the community to talk about their personal narratives as an introduction to this topic of what a narrative is; these people could also give some type of inspirational speech during that unit
  • The use of parents to help with class activities outside of school hours and also to observe class time
  • School and community organizations that would be willing to come into the classroom and help with larger projects that go on

Field Trips
  • Major Newspaper (Daily Republic, Argus Leader)
    • This trip would be interesting for the students to see what it was like on the inside of the writing process. Have the students watch and talk to the editors of the paper, help set print, etc.
  • Theatrical Productions (Sioux Falls Pavillion, Omaha)
    • Allowing the kids to see how the theatre and literature go hand in hand can give them a better sense of what people go through to make showcase their talent and vision. This could be used during a Shakespeare unit.
  • Taking a trip to a state historical museum during a history themed unit would be ideal in getting the students involved in the novel they are about to read. They could also use this experience to write what they think life would be like in that time period.


Worksheets
  • Reading Comprehension
  • Writing A Paragraph
  • What is a personal Narrative?


Books To Read
  • The Giver by Lois Lowry
    • This book is about a boy that must choose between what he feels is the right thing to do and what others in his "society" deem appropriate. This is an excellent book for middle school ages; it talks about right and wrong.
  • Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
    • This book is a "sci-fi" favorite that focuses on survival and life as if it were a game. This book would be ideal in teaching what life would be like if...
  • Stuck In Neutral by Terry Trueman
    • This is a great book about the feelings and thoughts of a young man that is "trapped" in his own body due to a physical and mental illness. The main theme of this book is not to judge a book by its cover and to stand up for someone when they can not do it themselves

Student Writing Prompts